News Desk: Choose Cthulhu II Coming to Kickstarter

We received an interesting message yesterday from a company in Europe that has somehow slide under our radar in the past. They’ve asked us to share the following press release with loads of information about their upcoming Kickstarter, Choose Cthulhu II. It’s a little long, but this project sounds pretty cool. I I will be keeping an eye on it.

Before getting to the point, I would like to thank you on behalf of all members of the Choose Cthulhu team for your interest in this project.

My name is Eduardo Pérez Rafael, writer and leader of this campaign for the publication and distribution of the book collection called:

These GAMEBOOKS are CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE versions based on the original stories from the master of literature H.P. LOVECRAFT and his celebrated Cthulhu Mythos series.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PROJECT

The product

In the 80s, gamebooks, and more particularly the CHOOSE YOU OWN ADVENTURE collection managed to sellover 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998 according to official figures by Publishers Weekly, the official American magazine targeted at publishers.

The success of this product derived from the creation of adventure stories that were easy reads, written in the second-person point of view, where each page presented the reader, who became the main character, with the chance to choose whatever action they would like to take based on the story told.

Each option would send the reader to different pages within the book that could lead to different endings –some good and some bad, depending on the decision they made. Decisions based on the reader’s cunning, ethic or intuition. It was precisely to this logic-based, decision-making process that they owed their success. Thus, children could learn that decisions can be relevant, and so they try to find better endings. These books encourage us to read and improve our capacity to make decisions.

We have to take into consideration that a whole generation grew up with these books.

Choose Cthulhu is a collection that has gone beyond understanding that these products that filled us up with joy during our childhood (until they became a passion) should make a comeback. We have taken a step further from the obvious and attractive component that is nostalgia.

Choose Cthulhu has not only resurrected a format that makes the reader the main character, but has also resorted to one of today’s most visually powerful brands: The Cthulhu Mythos, made up by the visionary writer H.P. Lovecraft, master of the cosmic horror.

In the first seven volumes, the collection Choose Cthulhu has adapted six of his best and most renowned horror-adventure stories to the GAME-BOOK format.

And we are well-aware that it is quite hard for a book to compete against how spectacular a videogame or the internet can be. Hence our resorting to a visually powerful brand such as the Cthulhu Mythos, a literary cycle belonging to the cosmic horror that, although written in the 20s and 30s, has grown over the decades until reaching the present day, where stories based on mysterious, alien deities that aspire to reclaim control over the Earth are still being created.

“This world was inhabited at one time by another race who, in practicing black magic, lost their foothold and were expelled, yet live on outside ever ready to take possession of this earth again.” ~ Howard Philips Lovecraft

Our first crowdfunding was a huge success at Europe

Our project was born out of a shared passion for writing of a group of great national authors who sought a way to offer as many people as possible a product that had fostered our writing.

None of us would be here today had we not discovered these books in our childhood. Books that unleashed an insatiable hunger not only for reading, but for being the protagonists of what we read. Those children wielded the power to decide what to do with the story, and they felt the need to make their own. And, luckily, some of us were successful.

The main problem we face as writers nowadays is knowing how to reach our audience. Publishing houses show a decreasing tendency to put their money on global projects and, instead, play it safe: award-winning books, and works that follow a template: the guidelines that they themselves have imposed for the market, making it almost impossible to innovate or resurrect formats –as it is happening in other industries, such as the technological (Nokia’s comeback, reviving consoles from the 80s and 90s, remastered videogames…).

The number of authors that, tired of geographical limitations, resort to patronage projects to do without the middleman and distributing issues, is ever-growing.

Global financing projects grant the direct reception of the product –from the creator to the consumer— with the possibility of offering many advantages and value added to the contributors.

Choose Cthulhu I was launched last 2018 and earned the amazing amount of 52320 € in a European platform called ULULE www.ulule.com/choose_cthulhu

The impact of the proposal was so huge that choose Cthulhu earnt 2 important prizes at the Let’s do it crowdfunding contest: Best Crowdfunding of 2018 for the Ulule Platform and best comercial initiative through crowdfunding of 2018.

OUR CROWDFUNDING PROPOSAL

Now, in February 2020, Choose Cthulhu II returns to close the invocation circle that we opened 2 years ago. We will achieve this by bringing you seven new stories that complete the Cthulhu Mythos cycle:

*Choose Cthulhu 8: The Colour out of Space*Choose Cthulhu 9: The Festival*Choose Cthulhu 10: The Whisperer in Darkness*Choose Cthulhu 11: The Haunter of the Dark*Choose Cthulhu 12: The Thing on the Doorstep*Choose Cthulhu 13: The Shadow out of Time* Choose Cthulhu 14: The Case of Charles Dexter Ward

And the totally new and exclusive 2nd generation gamebook:

+ Advanced Choose Cthulhu: Escape from R’Lyeh

STORIES that perfectly complement those that we had already adapted in Choose Cthulhu I:

*Choose Cthulhu 0: The Call of Cthulhu (extreme)*Choose Cthulhu 1: The Call of Cthulhu*Choose Cthulhu 2: At the Mountains of Madness*Choose Cthulhu 3: The Shadow over Innsmouth*Choose Cthulhu 4: The Nameless City*Choose Cthulhu 5: The Dunwich Horror*Choose Cthulhu 6: The Dreams in the Witch House

This collection also contains a “mythical” book, its very own “Necronomicon”; an exclusive volume for the first crowdfunding campaign of which there are only 2500 copies worldwide:

Each of these volumes will be available in two languages: English and Spanish, and will be published in two different formats for our contributors to choose from: The VINTAGE Edition : Trying to capture the feeling of nostalgia inherent in the classic books of the 80s, Vintage Choose Cthulhu is a collection which is completely faithful to the layout, look and feel of the ORIGINAL gamebooks from the 80’s.and DELUXE: Therefore, the Luxury Edition is a hardcover, larger and more complete format that includes an illustrated bestiary with all the creatures and characters that you may encounter during the adventure.

Choose Cthulhu is a project born after two and a half years of constant work; conceived and promoted by Edward T. Riker –penname of Eduardo Javier Pérez Rafael—, editor for the prestigious printing house Ediciones Idea for years.

This idea is the result of direct observation of the main problems and strengths of the publishing market. All members come together in this project owing to their artistic skills. They are authors belonging to the genre of fantasy who encourage new generations to read; and illustrators and book-cover artists within the genre.

They are all award-winning authors and artists and have an established reputation in the field. They all share a special passion for these gamebooks, with which they took their first steps as readers and, later on, as writers and artists. Therefore, they are well-aware of their potential and importance as a tool for a child’s development and emotions.

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